Do you love playing the part of office hero who always
intervenes to save the day when employees stumble? Good as it may
feel, know that if you find yourself often falling into this role,
you're heading not only toward personal inefficiency but toward
the possible collapse of your business.

"When you keep saying `I can do it! I'm the
leader!' you're rushing into paralysis," says Laura
Berman Fortgang, a Montclair, New Jersey, executive coach and
author of Take Yourself to the Top (Warner Books).

By playing the hero, you fall victim to an epidemic workplace
malady: upward delegation. But how do you know if you're a
victim? "Look at the work on your desk. How much of it had
originally been given to others but has now come back to you?"
says Joyce Gioia, a Greensboro, North Carolina, certified
management consultant and co-author of Lean & Meaningful: A
New Culture for Corporate America (Oakhill Press). When your
to-do list is on hold because you're working nonstop doing jobs
you initially delegated, you're suffering from full-blown
upward delegation.

It can, however, be hard to say no to employees seeking
help--even when it requires you to take the project off their plate
and put it on yours. Saying no is tough for two reasons. Number
one: It feels good to be the hero. Number two: Saying yes is human
nature. "Bosses want to be seen as good people," says
Gioia. "When a subordinate shows up at your desk and says `I
just can't do this,' our impulse is to say `I'll take
care of it.'?

"A lot of this has to do with the old patriarchal model of
boss as father figure," adds Linda Ford, who holds a doctorate
in human and organization systems, and is the owner of Optima
Consulting in Cupertino, California. Again, the attraction is
playing the hero. The problem is that in doing this, Ford warns,
"You're burning your company at the roots."

The smoke turns frighteningly visible when you see the
consequences that follow in an organization where upward delegation
is rampant. Here are some ramifications to consider:

Your effectiveness plummets. "[Every day] it seems as if
you're on a treadmill and can never get anything important
done," says Fortgang.

Worse still: "If you accept upward delegation, you wind up
doing little of the most important work," says Peter Meyer, a
management consultant in Scotts Valley, California. How can you do
the important work--the planning and decision-making that will grow
your business--when you're bogged down with work you originally
delegated?

By always stepping in and doing the tough tasks, you're
crippling your staff's growth, says Don Blohowiak, a Princeton
Junction, New Jersey, management consultant and author of Your
People Are Your Product: How to Hire the Best (Chandler House
Press). When a worker consistently delegates upward, he or she
falls into "learned helplessness," says Blohowiak.
"The better your staff is, the freer you can be to pursue
value-added tasks."

Robert McGarvey writes on business, psychology and management
topics for several national publications. To reach him online with
your questions or comments, e-mail rjmcgarvey@aol.com

Passing the Buck

Why do subordinates delegate projects to you? Are they just
shirkers who want to dodge their toughest tasks? Actually,
that's rarely what underlies an epidemic of upward delegation.
"People doing upward delegation don't actually want to do
it," maintains Ford. "They really would prefer to do
their own work." Therefore, rather than looking to the
failings of your subordinates in order to identify why upward
delegation is flourishing in your business, you should take a
closer look at yourself.

Experts pinpoint two causes that underlie most cases of upward
delegation. The first is that you habitually overturn
employees' decisions. When employees know that no matter how
hard they work, you'll overturn everything they do, they lose
the desire to do the job and will pass on as much as possible to
you.

Is your way the right way? Perhaps, but by constantly rejecting
employees' work, you ensure that they'll never develop the
ability to make independent decisions--and that will block not only
their growth, but your business's growth as well.

Are the costs of accepting your employees' decisions higher
than the costs involved in blocking their growth? When employees
see their decisions implemented, they're likely to take ever
more care in their thought processes--meaning they'll make ever
better decisions.

The second big reason employees kick work back to you is that
sometimes they honestly don't know how to do the job you've
given them. What should you do then?

For many business owners, the instinctive response is to agree
to take the project back. Don't. The more shrewd step is to
take the time to train the employee in what he or she needs to know
in order to accomplish the task. "Ask, `What do you think we
should do here?' If the employee says, `I don't know,'
don't jump in with solutions. Instead, suggest to the employee
that he or she come back to you with, say, three options and a
recommendation later in the day," advises Blohowiak.

If the employee comes back empty-handed, don't give up.
"Walk him or her through the process. And ask questions
designed to teach people how to solve their own problems,"
says Fortgang. "This process may take longer than doing the
work yourself, but if you do it yourself, you end up becoming an
ineffective leader."

Adds Blohowiak: "It's the old saw about teaching
somebody to fish vs. handing them a fish. Teach them, and
you've solved their problem for a lifetime. In business, it may
take time to accomplish this teaching, but it pays more dividends.
You get to watch your people blossom, and you enable yourself to
eventually be free to do more of the work you really should be
doing."

You're also building the foundation for a business that will
achieve continued success, says Ford. "For an entrepreneur,
the only sustainable competitive advantage is leadership. And
upward delegation is what most destroys it." But help
employees grow, and you're creating leadership that will give
your business a sustainable advantage. And that's the
bottom-line reason why the next time an employee tries to push a
task back on your plate, the only smart response is to just say no.
Do that, and your company may start growing almost as quickly as
you can delegate.